The Toledo Blade has been under fire since announcing in April that the paper’s Northwest Ohio Rib-Off in August “will feature the musical stylings of controversial Detroit rocker Ted Nugent.”

Ted Nugent

The Daily Kos asked: “Does [Blade director of sales] Mike Mosi and the Toledo Blade support and endorse people who want to kill the US President? Does Mike Mori and the Toledo Blade support and endorse people who want to kill Hillary Clinton and two female US Senators?”

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence encouraged people to tell the newspaper to cancel Nugent’s appearance. “Nothing goes worse with good food than the virulently racist rhetoric of a man who has no regard for the dignity or rights of others,” the group said.

On Sunday, the chairman of the Blade’s parent company wrote that he’s sorry the paper invited Nugent, but “in my judgment the very high standard for uninviting him was not met in this case.”

I knew nothing about Mr. Nugent’s music, his political views, his history, or otherwise. What I learned did not, in my opinion, confirm him to be a racist — he seems to have animus for many different groups equally. …

I also want to say that calling President Obama a “subhuman mongrel” does not make Ted Nugent a racist, as this kind of personal name-calling against a president of the United States is part of a long tradition of political slander that goes back to the founding of the Republic. Abraham Lincoln was called a baboon.